


Center of Gravity

by redsquadronblues (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (mostly), Balancing Act, Canon Compliant, Chaos Theory, Character Study, Drabble, Dubious Morality, Entropy, Gen, Kylux if you squint, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Physics, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fill, Sort Of, me? making relentless science metaphors? it's more likely than you'd think, no beta we die like men, the universe tends towards chaos yall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/redsquadronblues
Summary: Ren tells him one day, while they’re alone in the observatory and the knight is watching as Hux gazes off at distant stars, that perhaps he’s taken one too many physics classes, because now he seems to be incapable of comprehending how the Force fits into all of this.Hux replies that perhaps Ren needs to take one more physics class, because he seems to be incapable of comprehending how the two of them just have different viewpoints on the same thing.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Center of Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> A quick character study on Hux just for the sake of getting some words out. Prompt from [this](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/944091) list I made.

Armitage Hux has never really enjoyed balancing acts―he prefers to find himself firmly on one side of things, as he has been since the day he emerged scowling into this world. 

Well, his father always said he emerged scowling. Hux suspects he was crying, as no matter how good the Empire’s orientation and indoctrination programs may be, he doesn’t think there’s any power in this galaxy, not even the Force, that could enact ideological stances upon a newborn even before its eyes are open. 

But the second his eyes  _ were _ open, as they were very, very quickly thanks to the elite medical care the Hux family was able to get their elite hands on, the young Armitage was launched headfirst into the Empire, and it is there he has stayed for his entire life, all three some decades of it. He is steadfast this entire time in his belief that, no matter what may happen, he would rather die―though preferably on his terms instead of someone else’s―than live to see the Resistance bring the galaxy back into their chaotic grip.

It should come as no surprise to anyone of even the most passing familiarity with Hux, then, to find that order is the single most important thing in his life. He does not want to struggle to find balance, he wants to ensure that balance will stay exact and perfect and orderly, as it should, long into the future. 

_ Preventative medicine is more effective than curative medicine _ , he heard many times in the medical classes he took while at the Academy―all of them advanced, most of them experimental.  _ Fix it before it breaks _ , he heard in his mechanics classes―also all advanced, most of them one-on-one in the Empire’s finest shipyards. 

But Hux also took science classes, chemistry and physics for the most part. He understands the way the universe looks, can place one leather-gloved hand on something or― _ or! _ ―simply throw it up in the air to frame things distant and intangible, and can see through the surfaces of things to what is beneath. He understands the atoms, tightly packed together (or not), vibrating too slightly for all but the most advanced in microscopes to detect, holding the universe together piece by piece. 

He understands entropy, knows that the universe tends towards chaos because chaos, disorder,  _ the lowest possible state of energy _ , is quite literally the path of least resistance.

Ren tells him one day, while they’re alone in the observatory and the knight is watching as Hux gazes off at distant stars, that perhaps he’s taken one too many physics classes, because now he seems to be incapable of comprehending how the Force fits into all of this.

Hux replies that perhaps Ren needs to take one more physics class, because―and at this, he bites back the retort that comes to his tongue, about Ren’s destructive tendencies and disregard for authority at all times except when it’s truly necessary―he seems to be incapable of comprehending how the two of them just have different viewpoints on the same thing. 

Hux has never been Force-sensitive in the slightest, so that makes it all the more profound and jolting when Ren reaches out with a ghostly red hand to probe at the surface of his mind. Hux has seen him in interrogations, knows perhaps better than anyone except Ren himself, and maybe Snoke, what Ren can do, but he’s also never been truly afraid of Ren.

Well, maybe in the beginning, when the knight was actively being pulled towards the light side, when all those scars were fresh and his helmet―the first one, he’s destroyed many copies since―was shiny and new. But he hasn’t been afraid of Ren in a long, long time, so he just thinks, with all due respect (which is to say, no respect whatsoever), that he would really quite like if Ren went and shoved off.

He does well to hide his surprise as Ren, apparently more in one of those rare moods where he wants to be silent and brooding than looking for a conflict as he usually does, withdraws from his mind without a complaint.

He leaves a strange buzzing electricity in his wake, tingling in the skin between Hux’s eyes and behind his ears and at the base of his skull. Hux feels, for just a moment, as if he is losing his balance, but it’s not in the way he always feared it, not the light side or the Resistance pulling at him (then again, the light side of the Force cannot pull at him if he is not connected to the Force, no matter what Ren says about the Force being everywhere and every _ thing _ ). He is tilting, grabbing for a support, as he realizes that part of him perhaps would have let Ren poke around in his mind, if only the knight had asked nicely. It would have been so easy, too.

But for the time being, Ren seems, to Hux, incapable of doing most anything  _ nicely _ , let alone with the slightest consideration. When he isn’t carrying out Snoke’s orders to the letter, he’s acting on his own impulses, whims, and curiosity. Hux isn’t about to bend to his will out of fear, nor out of pity, and most  _ definitely _ not out of his own self-interest.

He turns, then, and leaves Ren alone in the observatory. The imprints of stars burn through the darkness of his eyelids as he blinks long and slow, rubbing his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. 

That feeling of imbalance, of incongruity, of falling towards a center of gravity that is not his own and thinking that perhaps he might just let it happen, that must be what those on the light side and those in the Resistance feel all the time. That they’re rife with chaos, always on their toes with arms outstretched, just one misstep away from a fatal plunge.

It’s a horrible balancing act, and Armitage Hux finds solace in the knowledge that, like so many other things, he hates it with all the fire of the galaxy’s strongest sun.


End file.
